Researchers named Fellows of the Royal Society Te Apārangi

Professor Margaret Wetherell and Professor Jadranka Travas-Sejdic of the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Science have been named Fellows of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Professor Wetherell is best known for her work on social influence and social identity and for developing a new field of research – discursive psychology – exploring the social basis of language.

Her work has been translated into seven languages and she has published 19 books and over 100 articles and chapters in edited collections. Her work is interdisciplinary in scope with wide impact outside psychology in sociology, social policy, anthropology, cultural studies and geography.

She is one of the most cited social psychologists in the world with over 42,000 citations and two of her books are listed among the most important psychological publications of the last 25 years by the British Psychological Society.

Professor Wetherell holds a Chair in Psychology at the University of Auckland after a 30-year career in social psychology in the United Kingdom where she held posts at the University of St Andrews and the Open University. She continues as Emeritus Professor at the Open University.

Professor Travas-Sejdic is Professor in the University’s School of Chemical Sciences and is an internationally recognised researcher in advancing the materials science of polymers and nanomaterials and their application in electronics, bioelectronics and biomedicine.

Her work on biosensors, self-assembled nanostructured conjugated polymers and advanced organic electronic materials is pioneering and the practical application of her research has recently seen the spin-out of a commercial company based on her work.

Her research is multi-disciplinary and she works collaboratively with researchers both in New Zealand and internationally. She is Director of the Auckland Polymer Electronics Research Centre and leads research programmes across chemistry, biology, medicine and engineering.

She is a valued teacher and mentor at the University for both students and staff. Her postgraduate and post-doctoral students have received awards for research and commercialisation ideas. She also mentors early to mid-career women academics across the University.

Fellowships are awarded by the the Royal Society Te Apārangi to recognise individual contributions to the advancement of science, technology and the humanities. Collectively, the Fellows comprise the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.